The invention concerns a surgical instrument with at least two clamping parts and a cutting device for use, in particular, in laparoscopic or similar minimally invasive operations.
Instruments of this type are used to cut, prepare and coagulate tissue, in particular in minimally invasive surgery, e.g. laparoscopy. A requirement of instruments of this type is that tissue can be safely gripped in a simple manner and then be cut through equally safely. At the same time, it is also important that there is no risk of damaging the surrounding tissue as a result of cutting through the tissue and the cutting movement this requires.
An instrument of this type, which is configured as a tubular shaft instrument and has electrodes in order to coagulate the gripped tissue, is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,445,638.
The problems with this instrument are considered to be that, on the one hand, there is considerable wear to the cutting instrument while, on the other, the tissue slips relatively easily from the clamping surfaces when being cut through and thus is not cut through completely.